Tigers continue to feast on Astros

What looked like it might be a lightning-fast matchup between ground-ball pitchers was quickly spoiled when Astros starter Lucas Harrell’s one-hit gem unraveled in the space of one-third of an inning.

Doug Fister overcame his own rocky inning to turn in his sixth quality start in eight outings, helping the Detroit Tigers win the home series with a 6-2 win Tuesday, holding on to sole possession of first place in the American League Central.

The Astros fell to 10-30, the first team since the 2006 Kansas City Royals to start so poorly, according to STATS, LLC.

Harrell came in with the third-best ground ball/fly ball ratio in the American League, and got nine of the first 12 Tigers hitters he faced to ground out. He also induced two double plays — one of them an unassisted double play by first baseman Chris Carter — adding to his MLB-leading total of 10.

Following Torii Hunter’s infield single in the first, Harrell allowed just two walks before giving up a two-out single to Omar Infante in the fifth. Infante swiped second base, and scored on Don Kelly’s RBI single to left.

Ramon Santiago followed with an RBI double to the left-center gap, bringing in the tying run, then scored on Andy Dirks’ ground-rule double to the right-center gap. It looked like Dirks might have a chance at an inside-the-park home run before the ball took a sharp hop over the 12-foot wall above the auxiliary scoreboard.

Three straight hits to start the sixth — capped by a Victor Martinez RBI single — knocked Harrell out of the game. After retiring 12 of the first 14 Tigers batters he faced, throwing 4 2/3 innings of one-hit ball, Harrell got just one out after that, and gave up six hits and four runs in the span of a third of an inning.

Reliever Travis Blackley allowed another run to score on a wild pitch before getting out of the jam.

Miguel Cabrera’s laser-shot home run into the left-field seats made it 6-2 in the seventh, and helped pad his MLB-leading RBI total to 41.

It was plenty of run support for Fister — then again, with the scoring margin in the first six games of the season series at 50-12, that’s not really been a problem.

Coming off his shortest outing of 2013, and the second-shortest of his stint as a Tiger — when he gave up five runs to the Nationals in just three innings — Fister wasn’t all that much sharper on Tuesday.

He needed just 14 pitches to get through the first, but twice that number to record his first out in the second. That included an 11-pitch battle with J.D. Martinez that resulted in an RBI double, putting the Astros on the board first.

Jimmy Paredes’ sacrifice fly for out No. 1 came on Fister’s 28th pitch of the inning. He’d have 47 pitches after the second, and 62 after the third.

That’s when pitch conservation started.

Fister’s next three innings — all three-up, three-down — required six pitches, 11 pitches, 10 pitches, as he retired 11 straight through the end of the sixth.

He retired 16 of 17 batters after Martinez’s double — including 12 in a row — before Martinez doubled again with one out in the seventh.

Fister finished with seven strikeouts — three of those in his final inning of work, the seventh. It was just the second start this season in which he did not hit a batter, keeping his MLB-high total at 10.

Joaquin Benoit pitched a 1-2-3 eighth inning, and Jose Valverde matched it in the ninth.

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Digital First Media. Read his “Out of Left Field” blog at opoutofleftfield.blogspot.com.